Ovid: Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) Trans. by A .S. Kline

[Pages:21]Ovid: Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) Trans. by A .S. Kline

Introduction1

Figure 1: Eug?ne Delacroix, Ovid among the Scythians, 1862

Ovid, the Latin poet of the Roman Empire, was banished in 8 CE from Rome to Tomis (in modern day Romania) by the exclusive intervention of the Emperor Augustus, without any participation of the Senate or of any Roman judge. The reasons for his banishment are not known.

At the time, Tomis was a remote town on the edge of the civilized world. According to Ovid, none of its citizens spoke Latin, which as an educated Roman he found trying. Ovid

1 Wikipedia contributors. "Exile of Ovid." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 Feb. 2014. Web. 23 Apr. 2014. [edited by RKH]

wrote that the cause of his own exile was carmen et error (a poem and a mistake). The poem was presumably the Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love).

Ovid was one of the most prolific poets of his time, and before being banished had already composed his most famous poems ? Heroides, Amores, Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris, Medicamina Faciei Femineae, his lost tragedy Medea, the ambitious Metamorphoses, and the Fasti.

In exile, the poet continued producing works, and wrote some more that survive today: Ibis, Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto, and possibly several other, minor poems. These works contain letters to friends and enemies, and also depict the poet's treatment by the Scythians ? particularly Getae, a nomadic people.

In 8 CE, the year of the exile, Ovid was 50 years old and it's believed that he enjoyed a great fame in Rome -- the generation of Virgil (19 BCE) and Horace (8 BCE) having ended, some scholars write that he was then the most famous poet in the city.

Book I Part I: His Task

Figure 2: Titian, Venus and Cupid, 1550

Should anyone here not know the art of love, read this, and learn by reading how to love. By art the boat's set gliding, with oar and sail, by art the chariot's swift: love's ruled by art. Automedon was skilled with Achilles' chariot reins, Tiphys in Thessaly was steersman of the Argo, Venus appointed me as guide to gentle Love: I'll be known as Love's Tiphys, and Automedon. It's true Love's wild, and one who often flouts me: but he's a child of tender years, fit to be ruled. Chiron made the young Achilles perfect at the lyre, and tempered his wild spirits through peaceful art. He, who so terrified his enemies and friends, they say he greatly feared the aged Centaur. That hand that Hector was destined to know, was held out, at his master's orders, to be flogged. I am Love's teacher as Chiron was Achilles', both wild boys, both children of a goddess. Yet the bullock's neck is bowed beneath the yoke, and the spirited horse's teeth worn by the bit. And Love will yield to me, though with his bow he wounds my heart, shakes at me his burning torch. The more he pierces me, the more violently he burns me, so much the fitter am I to avenge the wounds. Nor will I falsely say you gave me the art, Apollo, no voice from a heavenly bird gives me advice,

I never caught sight of Clio or Clio's sisters while herding the flocks, Ascra, in your valleys: Experience prompts this work: listen to the expert poet: I sing true: Venus, help my venture! Far away from here, you badges of modesty, the thin headband, the ankle-covering dress. I sing of safe love, permissible intrigue, and there'll be nothing sinful in my song. Now the first task for you who come as a raw recruit is to find out who you might wish to love. The next task is to make sure that she likes you: the third, to see to it that the love will last. That's my aim, that's the ground my chariot will cover: that's the post my thundering wheels will scrape.

Book I Part II: How to Find Her

Figure 3: John Leech, The Comic History of Rome: The Mother of the Gracchi, 1850

While you're still free, and can roam on a loose rein, pick one to whom you could say: `You alone please me.' She won't come falling for you out of thin air: the right girl has to be searched for: use your eyes. The hunter knows where to spread nets for the stag, he knows what valleys hide the angry boar: the wild-fowler knows the woods: the fisherman knows the waters where the most fish spawn: You too, who search for the essence of lasting love, must be taught the places that the girls frequent. I don't demand you set your sails, and search, or wear out some long road to discover them. Perseus brought Andromeda from darkest India, and Trojan Paris snatched his girl from Greece, Rome will grant you lots of such lovely girls, you'll say: `Here's everything the world has had.' Your Rome's as many girls as Gargara's sheaves, as Methymna's grapes, as fishes in the sea, as birds in the hidden branches, stars in the sky: Venus, Aeneas's mother, haunts his city. If you'd catch them very young and not yet grown,

real child-brides will come before your eyes: if it's young girls you want, thousands will please you. You'll be forced to be unsure of your desires: if you delight greatly in older wiser years, here too, believe me, there's an even greater crowd.

Book I Part IX: How To Win Her

Figure 4: Pleading, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1876

So far, riding her unequal wheels, the Muse has taught you where you might choose your love, where to set your nets. Now I'll undertake to tell you what pleases her, by what arts she's caught, itself a work of highest art. Whoever you are, lovers everywhere, attend, with humble minds, and you, masses, show you support me: use your thumbs. First let faith enter into your mind: every one of them can be won: you'll win her, if you only set your snares. Birds will sooner be silent in the Spring, cicadas in summer, an Arcadian hound turn his back on a hare, than a woman refuse a young man's flattering words: Even she you might think dislikes it, will like it. Secret love's just as pleasing to women as men. Men pretend badly: she hides her desire. If it was proper for men not to be the first to ask, woman's role would be to take the part of the asker. The cow lows to the bull in gentle pastures: the mare whinnies to the hoofed stallion. Desire in us is milder and less frantic: the male fire has its lawful limits. Remember Byblis, who burned with incestuous love, for her brother, and bravely punished herself with the noose? Myrrha loved her father, but not as a daughter should, and then was hidden by the covering bark: oozing those tears, that pour from the tree as fragrance,

and whose droplets take their name from the girl. Once, in the shady valleys of wooded Ida there was a white bull, glory of the herd, one small black mark set between his horns: it the sole blemish, the rest was milky-white. The heifers of Cnossos and Cydon longed to have him mount up on their backs. Pasiphae joyed in adultery with the bull: she hated the handsome heifers with jealousy. I sing what is well-known: not even Crete, the hundred-citied, can deny it, however much Cretans lie. They say that, with unpractised hands, she plucked fresh leaves and tenderest grasses for the bull. She went as one of the herd, unhindered by any care for that husband of hers: Minos was ousted by a bull. Why put on your finest clothes, Pasiphae? Your lover can appreciate none of your wealth. Why have a mirror with you, when you seek highland cattle? Why continually smooth your hair, you foolish woman? But believe the mirror that denies you're a heifer. How you wish that brow of yours could bear horns! If you'd please Minos, don't seek out adulterers: If you want to cheat your husband, cheat with a man! The queen left her marriage bed for woods and fields, like a Maenad roused by the Boeotian god, they say. Ah, how often, with angry face, she spied a cow, and said: `Now, how can she please my lord? Look, how she frisks before him in the tender grass: doubtless the foolish thing thinks that she's lovely.' She spoke, and straightaway had her led from the vast herd, the innocent thing dragged under the arching yoke, or felled before the altar, forced to be a false sacrifice, and, delighted, held her rival's entrails in her hand. The number of times she killed rivals to please the gods, and said, holding the entrails: `Go, and please him for me!' Now she claims to be Io, and now Europa, one who's a heifer, the other borne by the bull. Yet he filled her, the king of the herd, deceived by a wooden cow, and their offspring betrayed its breeding. If Cretan Aerope had spurned Thyestes's love (and isn't it hard to forego even one man?), the Sun would not have veered from his course mid-way, and turned back his chariot and horses towards Dawn. The daughter who savaged Nisus's purple lock presses rabid dogs down with her thighs and groin. Agamemnon who escaped Mars on land, Neptune at sea, became the victim of his murderous wife. Who would not weep at Corinthian Creusa's flames, and that mother bloodstained by her children's murder? Phoenix, Amyntor's son wept out of sightless eyes:

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